A blog about everything on my mind.

Letting Go

I haven’t written a blog post in a month because I took time off to reflect on what I was going to write next. I usually have a bunch of ideas floating in my head every Friday, but until now, I had nothing.

I knew I wanted to write something relevant to my life, a serious blog post to not only share with you, but with myself when I will need it.

I’m the type of person who plans her life through and through and expects it to work out that way. But I should have known that things never turn out the way I plan them to. In the L-J family, we tend to take everything on a “day-to-day” basis. Not because we want to, but because we have no choice with four young adults making their own plans and two parents running a business.

For instance, I know that I will never get anywhere on time when I’m staying with my family. Don’t get me wrong, I am usually late when I live alone. It’s just that when I decide to be somewhere at say, 7pm, I end up leaving at 7:30pm and I get there around 8:15pm. During that time, many things happen: one of the four “kids” decides they’re not going out anymore, one of the parents has a phone call to make, one of the “kids” decides they’re hungry, the other parent doesn’t want to drive anywhere, one of the “kids” decides they’re tagging along and I decide that I want to change my outfit.

Living in a big household with five other personalities should have taught me how not to make plans, but I always do. I make plans because I’m scared of what will happen if I don’t.

And that’s where I went wrong this year. I planned out everything: career, university, love, friends. I achieved some of those goals like a Queen and other goals turned into crap. I got really good grades for my final exams, but I lost touch with some of the most important people in my life. (Edit: This was not I didn’t “lose” these people because of my exams, but because they weren’t worth fighting for in the end.)

Because I’m the type of person who plans her day, when it doesn’t work out, I tend to worry. I don’t just worry quietly in a corner, I panic and frantically try to find a solution to my new crisis. Every time I worry, I put myself through sadness, heartbreak and anxiety.

But as a Christian, I believe that when God shuts a door, He doesn’t just open a window, He tears off the roof and let’s the sunshine in. That’s how I end up feeling after all this worrying. I realize that the reason why things haven’t gone my way is because there’s something better in store for me.

After a difficult month of worry and sadness, I learned three important things:

1) “Sometimes you need to do the right thing, not what is good for yourself.” I got this from Rosie Falta in Devious Maids’ final episode, and I’m glad I heard it at the right time. When we make decisions, we tend to get those two things mixed up. But doing the right thing doesn’t necessarily mean what feels good for yourself.

2) “Don’t worry about a thing. Because every little thing is gonna be alright”. Bob Marley was 150% right about this, as simple as it sounds. I can spend my time feeling sick and drawing conclusions until I get the answer I need, if I want to. But that won’t change what is meant to happen anyway. And no matter what happens, it’s going to be okay.

3) You can’t plan your life the way you want it to happen, because it has six different timelines. It probably doesn’t, but I got this from Abed in Community‘s Season 3. A group of friends are throwing dice to see who has to leave the room to get pizza while the rest gets to stay. On a die, there are six numbers, meaning there are six different possibilities of what could happen to the group. In real life, you can choose any path you want, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get exactly where you want.

So I’ve decided to let go and let life take the path that it should without worrying about what’s going to happen next. Because no matter how hard I’ll try to follow my schedule, it will never go as planned and I may always be late. And that’s okay.

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[…] accepting that we are not in control of our destiny. I truly admire someone who takes the time to let go and be free, even just for a while. We talked about the uncertainty of life and how spontaneity is […]